There are about 800,000 people who have gone on the gov't site and signed onto secession petitions. The first one was from Texas (where else?) but someone from all the other states has jumped on the bandwagon and made his/her own post.

MOSTLY I think it is nothing different that the “I'm going to move to Canada if Bush is elected again” thing back in '04. Everyone feels despondent when their guy fails at the polls. Lord knows, I had to insert a coat hanger in my mouth to fake a smile when I went to school the day after Reagan won in '84. I was sure the Republic was doomed. (I was more or less right. The entire economy crashed in '08.) Everyone is entitled to his/her own disappointment.

No big deal.

However, I do think that fantasizing about running away ('going Galt' for those on the far right) when you don't get your way and invoking such charged terms as 'secession' are different. As far as I know, no one (in any official capacity) in 150 years had brought up the racist ideology of states rights and secession until Gov. Good Hair Perry did it a couple of years ago. Likely, it will be his political legacy.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear someone say 'states rights' or 'secession' I hear 'slavery'. I see that famous photo of the slave facing away from the camera, his back covered in welted scars from the whip. It is an historical reality. Political philosophies have individual human consequences.

Mark Potok wrote recently, “In recent years the number of hate groups has risen to more than 1,000, and the number of anti-government "patriot" groups has shot up from just 149 in 2008 to 1,274, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center. For months now, groups on the radical right have increasingly fretted about a possible Obama victory. Now that that has occurred, the radical right may grow more dangerous still.”

No doubt most of these groups are just a handful of culturally/racially panicked, hysterical people and will do no harm. BUT...

The word and the concept of secession is back on the table. If my contention is right that we have turned a corner and now have a liberal governing majority in control...

Say what you will about the source but I thought this article offered a good perspective on the whole thing.

Quote:

But there's a lot of information to this story that's being left out. For example, the petitions in question are being posted directly to the White House website. That's a tantalizing detail if, say, a group of ragtag "patriots" defaced the White House website with signature requests that the government never wanted there. Or maybe if an armed militia stormed the White House IT department and force-posted the documents there. But that's not what's happening. Instead, these angry demands for freedom are being posted on a public section of the website. "Public" meaning open to anyone who wants to participate, even lunatics who think that Texas should break from the U.S. and rejoin with Mexico again or whatever. That person could be a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist or a bored 12-year-old kid trying to get a rise out of people. There's no way of knowing.

What we do know with like 132 percent certainty is that what's happening here is a non-issue. These are the ramblings of a small group of political zealots who actually care enough about spouting their particular brand of crazy that they figured out how to upload something to the Internet. To make the case for secession even more problematic, in case anyone is actually reading this and getting jazzed at the thought of needing a passport to travel to South Carolina, have a look at some of the signatures from that very state...

Sure, there are over 16,000 signatures, but, not even ten in, already half of them aren't even from South Carolina. If you recall, the Texas petition was somewhere in the 18,000-signature range. What are the chances that most of the people who signed this petition also signed the petitions for the other states "hoping" to secede? Suddenly we've gone from thousands of people in dozens of states hoping to break away and start their own country to just thousands of people in the country hoping that pretty much any state will secede. And, well, we've always kind of known that those people exist, right?

Yes, I know there is a contradiction between what I posted a few months ago and now. There are days (on alternate Tuesdays when the moon is full and my shoes are wet). At some point we have to decide if we are one nation or a collection of states. I thought this was decided at Appomattox, but that doesn't seem to be true. The Founders couldn't figure it out. I thought Lincoln's generation found the answer--and that was true until Gov. Perry brought it back to public discussion.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I hear someone say 'states rights' or 'secession' I hear 'slavery'.

Ya-ta's pro-secession thread
You know, I was really getting tired of all your racist secession talk in that thread. I'm amazed it took you this long to realize that smaller units of government = slavery and larger units of government = freedom. If only we could all be conquered by one grand Imperial Government, then we'd have the opposite of slavery!

Really Ya-ta... take a good, hard look at what you're posting here. I recognize that you grew up in a time when old racist bastards wanted to use their State government to impose racist laws on minorities. But you're showing an impressive lack of perspective when you advocate secession and extol the benefits... then immediately turn around and say the very concept itself is "racist" and unacceptable if someone else suggests it.

EDIT:
Surely you realize you're so full of hatred for "the other side" that you've projected negative concepts onto them that prevents them from having the same positive intentions that you have when they suggest the exact same solution that you did.

EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.

Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.

Last edited by comm on Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:46 am; edited 2 times in total

I recognize that you grew up in a time when old racist bastards wanted to use their State government to impose racist laws on minorities. But you're showing an impressive lack of perspective when you advocate secession and extol the benefits...

Ummm, er, ahh, you might want to think about the voter suppression laws a range of states passed this past year. Objectively speaking, the right has not demonstrated any deep long-lasting commitment to democracy...or anything resembling majority rule recently.

EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like is has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.

Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.
EDIT EDIT:
Nevermind.
It's pretty obvious that you were worried about there being legislation you didn't like when you made that thread, and secession was a viable solution to avoid it. And now that legislation that you do like is has better odds, you see it as "racist" and inappropriate for people to secede to avoid that legislation.

Best hypocrisy I've seen all week.

Arg.

No, it wasn't any specific piece of legislation. It was the total lack of legislation, if you want the truth.

Approximately half the country wants legislation of a whole range of issues, and you right wingers are standing in the way.

SOME days I think secession would be a good idea--of the progressive states and leave the conservative states to stew in their sweaty juices.

I think the whole secession thing is stupid but just for the sake of argument. If a state was allowed to secede, exactly what do they get to 'keep'? The land within its borders I would think but is there any monetary gift or penalty? What about mililtary bases that may happen to be in that state? Is it theirs?

This. If the Texas petition got on the news with 20,000 signatures on it and now is at 112,000 signatures, my guess is that the number of actual Texans who genuinely want to secede is somewhere along the lines of 50,000 (assuming that half of the signatures before being outed in the news and even more since coming into the public eye are either not in Texas or are repeat accounts of people who had already signed the petition). In a population of over 20 million, that's less than 1%. Even if all 112,000 were genuinely from Texas and genuinely wanted secession, that's less than 1%.

This is such a non-story. Petitions to secede happen after every presidential election. The only reason we are even hearing about this now is because it's on the interwebs, and news networks don't have to do actual journalistic work to get the numbers.

I do find it ironic, though, that so many people are choosing to use a method initiated by the Obama administration to voice their dissent against it.

I think the whole secession thing is stupid but just for the sake of argument. If a state was allowed to secede, exactly what do they get to 'keep'? The land within its borders I would think but is there any monetary gift or penalty? What about mililtary bases that may happen to be in that state? Is it theirs?

Any government buildings and equipment would be Federal property and would have to be relinquished.

After all, the spark of our last Civil War was over a Federal military base in South Carolina.

Quote:

The Democratic establishment was in full support of Hillary Clinton before the Iowa Caucus. That's a fact. Even the CBC, Congressional Black Caucus supported her. Its a fact. You may not believe he had a grassroots organization but the people that study these things, political scientists, etc. believe so.

All of which is true, none of which determines that he "came from nowhere".

Just because someone doesn't have the support of the establishment, doesn't mean their candidacy came from nowhere.

Quote:

As for the defense and health care, when was it ever an either/or proposition. We did a lot of things with a big military budget. We sent a man to the moon spending billions, we did a lot of things while maintaining the defense budget which was bloated anyway. Over a generaion the GAO found that a trillion, that's a trillion with a T went missin with out anyone knowing any idea where it went.

We put 500,000 men in Europe, 500,000 in Asia, 1,000,000 everywhere else, complete with the all the materiel to sustain them and did it over a 50 year period while waging 3 significant wars and a host of police actions, not to mention up building a navy that was as capable as the Russian, Chinese, British, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Indian navies combined. Or defense budget was the equivalent of all of those countries combined. Do you understand how much money it takes to keep 1 million+ troops stationed overseas and supplied?

Who came close to that? Britain sending 20,000 troops and a 20 ships to the Falklands for a few weeks? Soviets walking next door to Afghanistan or sending a few missiles, tanks, and planes over to Cuba or Vietnams?

Going to the moon was part of our defense spending. It wasn't stated, but it was understood. This was at the height of the Cold War, no one knew if space was going to get militarized or not.

You do realize that the world since the end of the Cold War has been trading debt for security (military action) with us, right? They buy our debt, we take care of security problems.

Quote:

Please provide some empirical evidence that health care and defense spending is an either/or proposition.

You have a limited budget, correct? That means that every dollar spent on one thing, is a dollar not spent on another.

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have both the most powerful military and free health care. But that probably means something else is getting slashed- Social Security, Education, who knows. Either that or you have massive taxes and low economic growth.

There was a country that tried to compete with us for 50 years with a massive social budget and a large military budget. They collapsed because they couldn't grow their economy.

The nations of Europe outsourced their defense to us and used it to keep their taxes low enough to promote growth (despite the claims of anti-tax conservatives) and provide strong government services. But if there was no US nuclear guarantee and no US military to fill the manpower and technology void, those countries would have dumped their health care money into defense.

Think about it- They were next to the Soviet Union and many didn't have mandatory conscription or their own nuclear programs and militaries that would have been crushed by the Soviets in 72 hours. If the US hadn't provided that security, all the production would have gone into Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, Scandanavia and Spain all supporting million man armies with thousands of fighters and hundreds of ships in an effort to be able to independently stand up to the Soviet Union. But because of US defense spending (and not spending on health care) they were able to devote that energy instead to their economy and infrastructure.

I came here to post this link when I saw the title, but I'm glad to see other Cracked readers (Crackers?) here. It's a none story. It's not 800,000 people, it's a few thousand who are signing each petition and anyone can do it. It's akin to getting top comment on a youtube video. The internet is filled with paranoid extremists who have exaggerated self-images, what else is new.

This thread is funny. Yata wanted to take his ball and go home and then his team won and the other team wants to go away and Yata calls them racists. (dammit I used a sport metaphor...I'm assimilating)

No, it wasn't any specific piece of legislation. It was the total lack of legislation, if you want the truth.

Approximately half the country wants legislation of a whole range of issues, and you right wingers are standing in the way.

SOME days I think secession would be a good idea--of the progressive states and leave the conservative states to stew in their sweaty juices.

The essence of what I said is true. You wanted X, but your political opposition didn't want X. Due to the impasse, you said that secession was the best thing for everyone. Which is a perfectly reasonable argument.

Now you want X and think it's more likely to happen. And now that some of your opponents support secession, it's like "slavery" (and Hitler?).

Rather than taking the wise approach of trying to please as many American citizens as possible, you've taken the hypocritical and authoritarian stance of simply trying to impose your values on as many people as possible.

Now you want X and think it's more likely to happen. And now that some of your opponents support secession, it's like "slavery" (and Hitler?).

Rather than taking the wise approach of trying to please as many American citizens as possible, you've taken the hypocritical and authoritarian stance of simply trying to impose your values on as many people as possible.

And isn't that the very essence of despicable leadership?

Of course. If ya-ta had his way, he'd have us all shipped off to re-education camps. The guy is full-stop authoritarian. All of his talk about "liberal" values is mere window dressing. No surprise there.